What then do I hope to borrow from these terms if not a concrete and final definition? Certainly there is a tone or goal to these terms, and I see to say with this name "progress is possible" and "liberty is possible", that I might prove as much. Given a group of "libertarian progressives" you have only such a group, that things progress and liberty are possible, and the system itself exists to find definitions of progress available to the group. Similarly it seems a group need less adopt my view of liberty as a working definition than to develop it's own, which then could be assumed, however robust, to undergo some adjustments, however checked such change is from frivolous redefinition.
If not a final definition of these terms, taken from the linguistic unconscious, what do I hope to take from progress and liberty if they are not only undefined but subject to an ongoing definitional progress. What I intend to borrow from our ideas of progress and liberty then are their grammar, what we might call their frameworks. Even leaving leaving a working definition of what is considered actively as progress (and the priorities of progress) open, a lot is left in the grammer of progress.
Progress is a metaphor from spatial understanding, and it's use in politics is related to the fact that all abstracts are thought of as bounded regions which you move into, out of, around and within, with boundaries you are on the edge of, get over, or are blocked by. The term progress provides a space of possible directions, allows for use of navigation metaphors with explicit, and thus conscious, goals.
The term liberty is meant to be stable, and very slow changing, while progress is meant to have both a stable definition and a sort of priority list of potential actions to do in the here and now, and planned out for the future.
The framing of progress is that we have desired goals. We can list certain things that would be progress, and we can prioritize which we work on based on costs and stressors of the current situation. The question at hand is what might the group take action on, which is to say, spend joint resources on. If you would answer the question "are we making progress?", then the answer will be in reference to some stated goals. If you achieve these goal only to find the anticipated rewards even if accurately predicted were not as satisfying as expected then in the bigger picture you have not made progress.
Both are true and it's silly to quander question such as "did you really make progress" and instead realize such questions are with reference to scope and scale and with respect to "progressing toward the goal" you did make progress, but with respect to the goal being as expected then you did not, with respect to the latter is the bigger issue. However, the distinction is important, because if you did not progress toward the goal, you need better principles of motion moving from one state to another, whereas if you did achieve the goal and it was not what you thought, you need better models for what a state will be like once you achieve it.
The system seeks to solve the problem of how best to cooperate within a group. It suggests that on the one hand, you can navigate by calculating values of the current state you think you could improving, bringing the conditions to a new state, and specifically those of common interest. That's the purpose of progress.
On the other hand liberty provide a map. A concept of liberty allows us to evaluate locations on the map of all possible conditions, known and unknown, hypothetical or actual. Progress invokes a metaphor of space, going from one state to one anticipated to be more desirable If it is, then the progress was real, if not, the progress was in vain. Nazi's made progress to their goals, but were in vain, due to insanity and severe opposite thinking well beyond the scope of useful irony.
So given this, how might we best cooperate? I have stopped here before a different question than that, a more basic notion, a nearly atomic, at least amoebic question which is "do we need to cooperate"? Is cooperation with others ever required by us rather than by those others? Is there truly a mutual need of any sort to cooperate, and if so, in the name of liberty, how do we optimize that to a minimum, since whatever else it is, the framework of promoting liberty involves minimizing individual constraints.
, can cooperation be necessary, or put another way, is there any such thing as necessary cooperation? To cooperate means, literally, to operate together, so cooperation is about action done in concert of some sort with other, that is, it's about actions.
It seems clear for an example that to share limited resources a group must cooperate, but is that necessary? I'd say yet but it also depends on how you think of cooperation. For example, is individual action sharing? Or can there be a system that "shares" the resources without any "action of sharing" by an individual. If the language of this all seem impossible, think about the shared resource of the atmosphere, we all share it, there is no option, yes no one is ever asked to actively "share" their oxygen, the sharing is accomplished naturally and instead of sharing individuals may be asked to "not pollute it"... that is cooperation, so that the sharing works, but is not strictly speaking an act of sharing, which I'm sure, like me, you think of as partitioning something you already possess in order to share it.
Even given the goal the result of distributed common resource, some system will provide distribution, and individual actions take place after that natural distribution.
Also we must as what subset of individual actions can possibly fall under "necessary cooperation" for surely it is only a subset, and in the name of liberty a very sharply defined subset. One does not have to fornicate in the name of "necessary cooperation", as a matter of personal liberty. I would say one does not have to go on living (has a right of suicide) and also the right to refuse to die in the name of necessary cooperation. Some would deny that "share" is an action in that set of things that can be "required cooperation", and may have an argument in their favor if "share" mean actions by an individual instead of the result of reasonable distribution. That is, everyone must get a sufficient "share" (noun) of a vital survival resource (can we assume people should be able to survive... I do) but that doesn't mean the individual does"sharing" (verb) in order to achieve that by readjusting the initial distribution.
If people do not get their share initially, enough to survive and thrive, then I do advocate sharing as a necessary action, but I also think that a system that distributes things that disproportionately such that last minute sharing is a "necessary cooperation" is clearly, prima facia, badly engineered. As a compassionate human, which means I enjoy being nice, being helpful, whenever I can, I think sharing is generally a good thing. I think in both senses it's part of optimal cooperation, but we are talking about necessary cooperation and ideally, once one comes to possession of something, sharing is ideally optional, and the system has already distributed resources sufficiently for survival and beyond necessary arguments.
Forced sharing action is a kludge, a jury rigging, to mitigate the problems with systems that cause stagnant pooling of resources. It's my position we must separate out such things. We cannot think of things like sharing just as the result, we must think about the means. A person told to share a resource may be irate about that, if they are thinking of their property, justly acquired. The same person may likely have no problem if what is meant is operating in a system where it "just works out" that everyone has sufficient share of a common resource (like air).
In such a case, I, as a social theorist, and pointing out it's good when systems are naturally distributed like air, and to a degree water, and more difficult when it is concentrated, like lumber and oil. We can model how things which are well naturally distributed are so, and apply those models to resources which are not so naturally distributed, in order design systems that accomplish that sort of reasonable distribution.
I don't think politics is about the distribution of resources, or wealth, and originally this essay went directly into the technical design of Progressive Libertarianism, but as I read my essay, I saw that framings that would strike people at the core of how they currently think of political divide would distract from the purely technical intentions of the system I was presenting.
I decided it was necessary to take the issue of a social philosophy first from a place that people were already at. My technical system is for people in a particularly technical and practical state of mind, like someone ready to sit down and learn a new software program, so I decided instead to be humble and pretend as if I really have to defend the idea of cooperation itself.
I think the natural desire to cooperate, say with family and freinds, speaks for itself, and I am not interested in defending that. I'm only interested in the social issues which seem to me to require talking about necessary cooperation and what might be required in terms of cooperation, due to the obvious contraposition of such a necessity and the necessity of
, and a social theorist is merely pointing out that we do share the air. Instead of taking air and redistributing it. Just as all the white keys on a piano are the notes of both C major and A minor, depending where you make your base and foundational references, the transfer of money can sometimes be modeled more than one way, and the differences can make a big difference in the overal tenor of the melody.
Do not get me wrong, like many compassionate people my notion of sharing is very positive, and I believe in sharing, dinners, ice creams, and really anything I can, but I don't see that as inherently probable
I tend to think that "sharing" is put on us by nature. Air and water are shared, geographical place is shared, people share homes, they are even born into many of these situations. Even desire to play a game, leading to resource issues with the tools of that game, it's field and so, is cultural, and often born into. We share these desired and needs already, and the issue is how cooperate at least as much as necessary, and ideally, as much as is optimal.
In the name liberty, whatever it meant in history or means to you now as you read it here, it seems to me it can only be the case that we want cooperation to come in an expressive form. A person should ideally be able to express their desire to cooperate individually, and the result should be overall cooperation within the group, as opposed to the individual having an autocratic leader
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we try to find actions that we can take as a group to accomplish the necessary cooperation. Further, I prefer expressive systems to allow this action through expression rather than autocratic system which operate by appointing priveledged individuals, when practical.
At any time there will be in practice a set of things that are considered necessary cooperation (e.g. "we all agree not to kill humans", "we all agree not to defecate in the street"). This set of necessary cooperations held by a particular group at a particular time must in some times be built up, and in others winnowed. In other words the set of cooperative actions considered necessary are not to be maximized, nor minimized, nor to calculated "objectively", but instead it are to be "optimized" using intersubjective logic. "Necessary cooperations", like many such sets as analyzed in progressive libertarianism, should not be taken as something timeless, nor part of nature. Take it as something akin to a current attitude of a particular group. What then concerns us practically is how to collect individual ways of thinking into actions which require shared resources.
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"Progressive Libertarianism" is the name of my political and social philosophy. It is a skeptical philosophy, and is not represented by a bunch of positions, as a dogma generally is, but as a means for analyzing social decisions, actions taken by groups.
It is my goal it does not distort situations or information, it is meant to be a skeptical philosophy and as a skeptic and materialist naturally I seek a clear lense through which to view affairs of great scale, and to take measurements with a precise ruler with regular and fine markings. Creating high fidelity measuring instruments is a favorite activity of skeptics. However, Progressive Libertarianism is not value neutral.
I explain it in terms of three basic notions, which make up a system two of which are up front in the name.
It is my
Two of these I have recorded in the name I have given the system, progress and liberty, which on the one hand convey values, and on the other, beg thorough definition. The third is not explicit in the name, but I will state here as the first point:
- A social philosophy should assume people think differently from each other and from themselves over time. This is not to say these ways of thinking cannot be successfully classified and sorted by various criteria for whatever given purpose.
- Progress can be defined and worked toward.
- Liberty can be defined and optimized.
The word progress is not understood merely by its definition, but by its grammar, the semantics of the frame implied by term. Whatever you think constitutes progress, it's something you move toward, and it can be used to discuss common goals, if they exist, which generally they do. The word liberty is also not merely a concept of what "makes up liberty" but a semantic framework in which a person's "freedom" is modeled as an amount, allowing use of the language of optimization, maximization, weighting, and so on. The terms provide a their own logic, somewhat separate from their initial base meanings, which has to do with their entailments as metaphorical system.
To address the first point in such a way that it becomes implicit in all the analysis within this system I think it's useful to formalize the notions involved with a symbolic system. The idea that everyone has their own "way of thinking" can be deconstructed into elements that then each can be given symbols and symbolic operation that operate on them. As with all symbolism, this will introduce sequentialism and discreteness in what are "really", on the natural physical level, parallel and continuous phenomenon, and the affect of this will be addressed later.
It is my view that something called progressive libertarianism must start from the idea that the problem before us in social philosophy is the cooperation of not-entirely-like minded individuals, at whatever level is truly necessary to first order, and to an optimal level beyond that. And also that it will follow that the best association among individuals with optimal individual liberty exists in a sense specifically to allow what I would like to call cooperative disassociation. To maximize (or optimize) individual liberty then can be understood in one sense as protecting the right of reasonable disassociation for individuals, without jeopardizing, at the least, necessary cooperation.
At any time there will be in practice a set of things that are considered necessary cooperation (e.g. "we all agree not to kill humans", "we all agree not to defecate in the street"). This set of necessary cooperations held by a particular group at a particular time must in some times be built up, and in others winnowed. In other words the set of cooperative actions considered necessary are not to be maximized, nor minimized, nor to calculated "objectively", but instead it are to be "optimized" using intersubjective logic. "Necessary cooperations", like many such sets as analyzed in progressive libertarianism, should not be taken as something timeless, nor part of nature. Take it as something akin to a current attitude of a particular group. What then concerns us practically is how to collect individual ways of thinking into actions which require shared resources.
How like-minded a group is on a particular issue is something that needs to be calculated and thus we can use the symbology of calculation to represent and abstract it. However, we cannot read minds and we cannot speak for others, so it's important to realize the appearance of a logical system should not be taken to imply objective means of calculation. The idea that you can tell someone else what the result of applying their way of thinking is, is counter to any reasonable definition of individual liberty. Thus, all actual operations in progressive libertarianism involve allowing the individual to represent their own way of thinking authoritatively, regardless of the material fact that an individual can indeed make miscalculations regarding their own view.
To bring things back to the concrete, this is the progressive libertarian explanation of why we vote. So in practice "calculating the group opinion" is done by consulting with the individuals of the society (e.g. including but not limited to voting). However, people assume too much about what voting is, how it has to work, and they generalize their own experience with winner take all multiple choice (WTAMC) democracy. A formalization will allow us to adopt a higher level abstraction. What becomes important is not a specific notion of voting and what one can vote for, but instead voting can be replaced with an abstraction for individual the expression of individual volition. We can attempt to ensure that the individual is able to express their contribution to the whole set of thinking in a culture and that they are free to do so as they honestly wish.
I think all systems require voting in a familiar sense, but there are infinite ways to count votes, many mathematically more reliable and robust than the system we are accustomed to using.
Progressive Libertarianism includes a notational system:
To address the first point in such a way that it becomes implicit in all the analysis within this system I think it's useful to formalize the notions involved with a symbolic system. The idea that everyone has their own "way of thinking" can be deconstructed into elements that then each can be given symbols and symbolic operation that operate on them. As with all symbolism, this will introduce sequentialism and discreteness in what are "really", on the natural physical level, parallel and continuous phenomenon, and the affect of this will be addressed later.
It is my view that something called progressive libertarianism must start from the idea that the problem before us in social philosophy is the cooperation of not-entirely-like minded individuals, at whatever level is truly necessary to first order, and to an optimal level beyond that. And also that it will follow that the best association among individuals with optimal individual liberty exists in a sense specifically to allow what I would like to call cooperative disassociation. To maximize (or optimize) individual liberty then can be understood in one sense as protecting the right of reasonable disassociation for individuals, without jeopardizing, at the least, necessary cooperation.
At any time there will be in practice a set of things that are considered necessary cooperation (e.g. "we all agree not to kill humans", "we all agree not to defecate in the street"). This set of necessary cooperations held by a particular group at a particular time must in some times be built up, and in others winnowed. In other words the set of cooperative actions considered necessary are not to be maximized, nor minimized, nor to calculated "objectively", but instead it are to be "optimized" using intersubjective logic. "Necessary cooperations", like many such sets as analyzed in progressive libertarianism, should not be taken as something timeless, nor part of nature. Take it as something akin to a current attitude of a particular group. What then concerns us practically is how to collect individual ways of thinking into actions which require shared resources.
How like-minded a group is on a particular issue is something that needs to be calculated and thus we can use the symbology of calculation to represent and abstract it. However, we cannot read minds and we cannot speak for others, so it's important to realize the appearance of a logical system should not be taken to imply objective means of calculation. The idea that you can tell someone else what the result of applying their way of thinking is, is counter to any reasonable definition of individual liberty. Thus, all actual operations in progressive libertarianism involve allowing the individual to represent their own way of thinking authoritatively, regardless of the material fact that an individual can indeed make miscalculations regarding their own view.
To bring things back to the concrete, this is the progressive libertarian explanation of why we vote. So in practice "calculating the group opinion" is done by consulting with the individuals of the society (e.g. including but not limited to voting). However, people assume too much about what voting is, how it has to work, and they generalize their own experience with winner take all multiple choice (WTAMC) democracy. A formalization will allow us to adopt a higher level abstraction. What becomes important is not a specific notion of voting and what one can vote for, but instead voting can be replaced with an abstraction for individual the expression of individual volition. We can attempt to ensure that the individual is able to express their contribution to the whole set of thinking in a culture and that they are free to do so as they honestly wish.
I think all systems require voting in a familiar sense, but there are infinite ways to count votes, many mathematically more reliable and robust than the system we are accustomed to using.
Progressive Libertarianism includes a notational system:
- Let T represent the whole set of all ways of thinking for a set of persons, G, consisting of N people.
- Let Ti represent the particular way of thinking of an arbitrarily chosen individual i from the set G.
- Let A be some joint action done by (using the resources of) G, and consider A as the result of some operation, O(T) over the set of T.
This essentially abstracts all possible ways of voting, including potentially surreal, virtual, hypothetical ways, as "an operation" for combining Ti into an action A. In practice we have a material "operation" of voting, but in the analytic system we have an abstraction into which we can put a spectrum of possible operations. Ideally this allows comparison between different ways of combining volitional intention, and we can incrementally increase the validity of our means of taking measure of public opinion, in the sense that, for example, IRV is superior to WTAMC.
This formalism is not meant to imply that one can do such calculations mathematically on one's own as an individual. It is my position that these calculation can only be done by a group, that is, by a system which involve individual volition and contribution. I brook no notion one can calculate the effective vote or view of another. This is a relativistic and skeptical social philosophy and we shall find this abstraction is meant to provide a framework for expressing the desire of a group, melded with what I feel is appropriate for a group to act toward, which is in general has to, for me, involve the ideal of reasonable individual liberty, and that progress is possible which can enable that.
All execution of any group action must map, be traceable to, and must be produced from the volition of the individuals within the group. In modern terms that means by some sort of voting, of speaking for yourself in a way that materially contributes to the action taken in a way reasonable and rational. Reasonable and rational are both terms which the group must agree on, starting from their gramatical frameworks, as with progress and liberty, and which in principle is done by some operation on the full set T.
This formalism is not meant to imply that one can do such calculations mathematically on one's own as an individual. It is my position that these calculation can only be done by a group, that is, by a system which involve individual volition and contribution. I brook no notion one can calculate the effective vote or view of another. This is a relativistic and skeptical social philosophy and we shall find this abstraction is meant to provide a framework for expressing the desire of a group, melded with what I feel is appropriate for a group to act toward, which is in general has to, for me, involve the ideal of reasonable individual liberty, and that progress is possible which can enable that.
All execution of any group action must map, be traceable to, and must be produced from the volition of the individuals within the group. In modern terms that means by some sort of voting, of speaking for yourself in a way that materially contributes to the action taken in a way reasonable and rational. Reasonable and rational are both terms which the group must agree on, starting from their gramatical frameworks, as with progress and liberty, and which in principle is done by some operation on the full set T.
Keeping this formalization in mind helps me to establish practical meanings for the idea of a working model for the notions of progress and liberty since adopting a definition of progress is itself a group action, A. The action is yielded from the set T, by some operation O(T), which is able to accomodate our assumption that there is contradiction within T, i.e. between Ti and Tj. This is a way of using a mathematical metaphor to say the operation used to decide group actions, should consider the whole set T, in other words, everyone's opinion.
This symbolism provides a framework for careful identification in the practical steps, in real world processes, which are required to combine our many ways of thinking into optimal common action. For example one can imagine that an individual thinking with system Ti, which is their way of thinking, would come up with action Ai. This action is what they themselves would advise if the decision was left to them alone. Keep in mind it is still a group decision, that is, Ai involves group resources.
By comparing the distribution of Ai compared to the final group action A, we can judge the operators used to join the set. For example, it is easy to describe an autocratic decision in this model with an operator OA, which is "autocraticism", which simply picks the Ai which is from a particular individual and used that as the "combination" or "representative decision" of the full set of possible actions. A = OA(T) = Aautocrat. In our modern democracies, the operator O is WTAMC with 50% thresholds and a straight normalized sum.
This notation has allowed me to simulate the ideas of relativistic skepticism and to model other political ideologies from its "point of view". As with "progress" as a term, the term "liberty" also has a "working definition" at a given time, which is held in common, or strictly, "as if in common". What I mean by "as if in common is as follows". A law I don't agree with, but that I agree is valid (that is, it's a group decision which didn't go exactly my way, but I respect that it ought to be a group decision), is held by me "as if in common" with others. Such cases are stressors and are what we try to mitigate and alleviate when optimizing liberty.
It is obvious, I would think, that the words "liberty" and "progress" already have connotations and that I no doubt have something in mind by advocating "progress", although I acknowledge that in group decisions, the group, somehow, must also be given the power to define such terms. For example, I am not willing to adopt "as if in common" a notion that liberty can mean "power apportioned by heredity" or a notion of progress which is "a more complete subjucation of other peoples". It is conceivable some would adopt such definitions, in spirit if not under those exact words, but I'm not willing to.
Progress, generally, by those wishing to use the word at all, can be expressed as obtaining a better situation which throws downfield the difficult question of "what makes one situation better than another?" which upon close inspection has a great many complexities if given any two 'situations' to compare. Nevertheless, for some situations, the comparison is trivial. We often focus on difficult situational comparisions, but only because many are too simple to really bother with. All other things being equal, for example, is it better for water to be more or less poisonous?
The question thus is what is to be considered better by a particular group at a particular time. This may actually be a still easier question than how to achieve the particular goals which are already agreeable. If all think cleaner air is better than more poisonous air, we still don't agree necessarily on how to make air cleaner. Also, we will likely find controversy in how to deal with the complex comparisons related to what might seem to be, or even actually be, the inevitable undesirable costs. That is, if cleaner air required dirtier water, as far as we knew, then we have two "simple valuations" that we agree on, that clean water is better and clean air is better, but an apparent or potentially necessary inverse decision to make.
Progressive Libertarianism as I see it anticipates such complexity and attempts to provide a framework for analyzing such comparisons which calls upon individual participation (abstracted as "operations on T") and also systems for executing actual calculations (abstracted from the idea of an "election") from individual action (aka abstractions of "voting"). The debate, thus, in a progressive libertarianism about progress is entirely focussed on what shall be used for the criteria of progress, and which means, experimental or well known, are to be utilized at a given time.
The term liberty is meant to refer to individual liberty, and however it is defined beyond that, it is not to lose touch with the individual case. In progressive libertarianism liberty is individual freedom... groups have complex ways of thinking, large sets of suggested, potential, and taken actions, and any question of the group's liberty, is to be taken in reference to various summations and averages regarding individual liberty such that it is not possible to calculate liberty in such a way that a small subgroup with a lot of individual liberty within a larger group with negligible liberty (e.g. slaves) counts as an "optimization" of liberty.
The general effort to formalize allows us to talk about these issues using mathematical and logical metaphors, since some operations on a set can be used to track the distribution of something like liberty or power, and not a simple sum. That is, if one were to say liberty could be calculated by taking the individual liberty of each member of the group as a scaler value and summing them, then one might maximize liberty without regard to the distribution among the group, whereas if one was to measure the average liberty of each individual, one ends up not only getting a different number, but subsequently motivating an entirely different path of action.
As a skeptical system we do not ever assume any of our definitions are perfect, or final, however, we do presume, sometimes, that we have a basis providing consistency, from which measured changes can be rationally made.
I do not think it is, in reality, very controversial what ought to be considered progress, and I feel people whine and fight about it more than is actually sensible. That is, to me, much of the difference seems more emotional than rational at the level of what would obviously be nice. We agree on progress to a large degree, I think, public health, more security against predictable and unpredictable events, economic survival, efficient technology, non-toxic technology, more individual freedom. Similarly, I think there is a lot of agreement on the sort of things that deter these ideas of progress, such as, individual aggression, counterproductive technology, economic domination, unrealistic thinking, sloth, and so on. The real controversy at the moment is almost no common agreement on what might affect change to achieve these sorts of things we do actually "agree" on.
For some reason there seems to be a controversy of a boolean nature between the notion that doing something about the problems would be best vs leaving the problems to sort themselves out might be best. Progress by design, the effort to formalize... this should tell you that I do not believe this is a controversy at all within progressive libertarianism. Progress mean requires engineering. We can do something.
This political philosophy is first, a methodology for discussing group action in terms of criteria of progress and proposed ideas in a group that does not pre-agree to pretend to be a homogenous group, or a group in which all decisions are considered unanimous once made. I assume a group of people, and indeed even individuals, have spectrums of thought. I want to work with people that are different than myself, that think things I didn't think, and triangulate. It can be hard to work with them, because we think so differently, so what does it mean, how do we sort it out? That's what progressive libertarianism really seeks to address. That and the theory that sorting that out will lead to progress and liberty.
This symbolism provides a framework for careful identification in the practical steps, in real world processes, which are required to combine our many ways of thinking into optimal common action. For example one can imagine that an individual thinking with system Ti, which is their way of thinking, would come up with action Ai. This action is what they themselves would advise if the decision was left to them alone. Keep in mind it is still a group decision, that is, Ai involves group resources.
By comparing the distribution of Ai compared to the final group action A, we can judge the operators used to join the set. For example, it is easy to describe an autocratic decision in this model with an operator OA, which is "autocraticism", which simply picks the Ai which is from a particular individual and used that as the "combination" or "representative decision" of the full set of possible actions. A = OA(T) = Aautocrat. In our modern democracies, the operator O is WTAMC with 50% thresholds and a straight normalized sum.
This notation has allowed me to simulate the ideas of relativistic skepticism and to model other political ideologies from its "point of view". As with "progress" as a term, the term "liberty" also has a "working definition" at a given time, which is held in common, or strictly, "as if in common". What I mean by "as if in common is as follows". A law I don't agree with, but that I agree is valid (that is, it's a group decision which didn't go exactly my way, but I respect that it ought to be a group decision), is held by me "as if in common" with others. Such cases are stressors and are what we try to mitigate and alleviate when optimizing liberty.
It is obvious, I would think, that the words "liberty" and "progress" already have connotations and that I no doubt have something in mind by advocating "progress", although I acknowledge that in group decisions, the group, somehow, must also be given the power to define such terms. For example, I am not willing to adopt "as if in common" a notion that liberty can mean "power apportioned by heredity" or a notion of progress which is "a more complete subjucation of other peoples". It is conceivable some would adopt such definitions, in spirit if not under those exact words, but I'm not willing to.
Progress, generally, by those wishing to use the word at all, can be expressed as obtaining a better situation which throws downfield the difficult question of "what makes one situation better than another?" which upon close inspection has a great many complexities if given any two 'situations' to compare. Nevertheless, for some situations, the comparison is trivial. We often focus on difficult situational comparisions, but only because many are too simple to really bother with. All other things being equal, for example, is it better for water to be more or less poisonous?
The question thus is what is to be considered better by a particular group at a particular time. This may actually be a still easier question than how to achieve the particular goals which are already agreeable. If all think cleaner air is better than more poisonous air, we still don't agree necessarily on how to make air cleaner. Also, we will likely find controversy in how to deal with the complex comparisons related to what might seem to be, or even actually be, the inevitable undesirable costs. That is, if cleaner air required dirtier water, as far as we knew, then we have two "simple valuations" that we agree on, that clean water is better and clean air is better, but an apparent or potentially necessary inverse decision to make.
Progressive Libertarianism as I see it anticipates such complexity and attempts to provide a framework for analyzing such comparisons which calls upon individual participation (abstracted as "operations on T") and also systems for executing actual calculations (abstracted from the idea of an "election") from individual action (aka abstractions of "voting"). The debate, thus, in a progressive libertarianism about progress is entirely focussed on what shall be used for the criteria of progress, and which means, experimental or well known, are to be utilized at a given time.
The term liberty is meant to refer to individual liberty, and however it is defined beyond that, it is not to lose touch with the individual case. In progressive libertarianism liberty is individual freedom... groups have complex ways of thinking, large sets of suggested, potential, and taken actions, and any question of the group's liberty, is to be taken in reference to various summations and averages regarding individual liberty such that it is not possible to calculate liberty in such a way that a small subgroup with a lot of individual liberty within a larger group with negligible liberty (e.g. slaves) counts as an "optimization" of liberty.
The general effort to formalize allows us to talk about these issues using mathematical and logical metaphors, since some operations on a set can be used to track the distribution of something like liberty or power, and not a simple sum. That is, if one were to say liberty could be calculated by taking the individual liberty of each member of the group as a scaler value and summing them, then one might maximize liberty without regard to the distribution among the group, whereas if one was to measure the average liberty of each individual, one ends up not only getting a different number, but subsequently motivating an entirely different path of action.
As a skeptical system we do not ever assume any of our definitions are perfect, or final, however, we do presume, sometimes, that we have a basis providing consistency, from which measured changes can be rationally made.
I do not think it is, in reality, very controversial what ought to be considered progress, and I feel people whine and fight about it more than is actually sensible. That is, to me, much of the difference seems more emotional than rational at the level of what would obviously be nice. We agree on progress to a large degree, I think, public health, more security against predictable and unpredictable events, economic survival, efficient technology, non-toxic technology, more individual freedom. Similarly, I think there is a lot of agreement on the sort of things that deter these ideas of progress, such as, individual aggression, counterproductive technology, economic domination, unrealistic thinking, sloth, and so on. The real controversy at the moment is almost no common agreement on what might affect change to achieve these sorts of things we do actually "agree" on.
For some reason there seems to be a controversy of a boolean nature between the notion that doing something about the problems would be best vs leaving the problems to sort themselves out might be best. Progress by design, the effort to formalize... this should tell you that I do not believe this is a controversy at all within progressive libertarianism. Progress mean requires engineering. We can do something.
This political philosophy is first, a methodology for discussing group action in terms of criteria of progress and proposed ideas in a group that does not pre-agree to pretend to be a homogenous group, or a group in which all decisions are considered unanimous once made. I assume a group of people, and indeed even individuals, have spectrums of thought. I want to work with people that are different than myself, that think things I didn't think, and triangulate. It can be hard to work with them, because we think so differently, so what does it mean, how do we sort it out? That's what progressive libertarianism really seeks to address. That and the theory that sorting that out will lead to progress and liberty.
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